It's a little bit about me, about what I think of things and the people in my life. I like to think that this is not a space to be narcissistic, but a place where I can share a little of what I have with you, my readers.
I do tend to like life a lot so I hope that you will enjoy my writing here as much as I enjoy writing about it to you.
Thank you.

Thursday, 7 April 2011

.A Gift for the Soul.

What I offer in this piece is a piece of my voice about something I know about the soul.

I am not offering something that is the absolute truth for you, or something that you must follow.

I only want to share something with you, and I hope that it will be a gift for the soul. Yours and mine.

The soul is a rare and wonderful thing. It is a light that cannot be changed, but can change when it wants to. It cannot die but accepts death. It is everlasting, and can walk through different forms, messages and ways.

The soul guides and lives beyond the heart. When the body dies, the soul goes on living. Whether it is defined and can be rationalized, the soul has its own reasons for its ways. Sometimes, it’s best to listen and embrace it rather than to fight against it.

The soul is stronger than any force of nature. What it lives on, is more than any man or woman can see. It lives on love. Love is true when there is faith. Faith is faith when you believe in what you cannot see.

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I am not here to play words with you.

Open your heart; keep your mind quiet for a while.

Disagree with me, if you must, but like I said earlier, this is a piece of my voice.

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Faith is believing in what you cannot see. When that exists, you practice love.

Love can only start going out to others when it comes from you. Love can be received when we give.

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Love is unconditional. It is also a commitment, and such is a hard word. Commitment is a hard word because not everyone acts on commitments that were made. A promise to buy a child an ice cream is a commitment. Once, when I was small and my father made me a promise to take me to visit my sick friend, he broke my heart when he told me that he couldn’t.

I was so sad at that time because my sick friend meant a lot to me.

She passed away a little later.

A commitment is not to belittle. Especially when you don’t affirm the other’s importance to them after you break your commitment to them. It is worse when it means a lot to them. However, sometimes, it is ok to break promises, but a lot of us forget that when another person is involved, a commitment involves your connection to the other.

The more promises you break to another only shows the other how they mean to you. That is one of the reasons why so many relationships break down. But here is the thing, not everyone sees when a relationship breaks down.

So when you are going to break a commitment, think hard before you do so. But it must be noted that we are all human. We make mistakes. Just don’t keep repeating the mistakes you make. Sometimes, they become too big for us repair.

Does everyone ask themselves why we make commitments and connections with other people?

I think it’s because we want to love and be loved in return. We are not alone in this world.

We can be very lonely people. We can even make ourselves far more lonelier than we are.

We can stand in a crowd of a million people, and go: “I feel so alone now.”

Have you ever felt that before?

Over the years, I have learned to enjoy my own company. However, as much as that is wonderful, I can’t stand to be with myself for too long. I like people way too much! Plus, I can drive myself crazy at times.

I love new things. New things allow me to reinvent myself, and in the past, run away from the things that did not accept me.

Then, I have slowly realized something over the years: I used to make a lot of connections and commitment that I did not want to keep enough. In fact, I used to tell this to my mom about relationships,

“It’s so mafan (troublesome in Cantonese).”

What I didn’t realize until lately is that I applied it to everyone.

Wait, I correct myself: I love people. I love people so much that I always want to give myself to people, to create good in life. However, I never realized until lately about how I conducted myself with the people in my life, and what our relationships was to us.

I realized that most of my life is about running away.

When I started feeling that some of my mates were getting too boring for me, I ran away from them. I ignored some of their calls, and started other connections to make better mates. When I started feeling exhausted with family members for having to deal with my life choices, I used to run away from them so that I can find a new family.

When I felt that I could not get what I wanted from staying in Malaysia, I ran away. I may have used my education as an excuse, but in my heart, I did not leave Malaysia to better my studies.

I left Malaysia so that I could run away from my broken heart. The girl I loved at that time left me for overseas without saying goodbye. I thought that by finally leaving, I could find myself. But the truth in me running away for so long was that I thought that I could not find myself in the things around me. And to at an angle, I was right. It takes two hands to clap. Sometimes, when things involved more than one person do not work out between you and the others, it’s no point trying to make claps happen. However, I also was an offender too.

I have no regrets leaving Malaysia and living in the UK. Being in the UK helped me find myself in ways that I had not imagine. I slowly inched out to learn about myself beyond my comfort zone. I started learning that I could not always have my mother’s food to feed me, or my dad’s money to make sure that I could pay for things. Then, I started doing a lot of uncomfortable things like managing money to make sure that I didn’t waste what I had, or learning to find a new place to live on my own. I also started becoming comfortable with the person I was inside. And slowly, I met people who showed that there was another side of love. They also showed me that the person that I was holding back from myself was a person worthy of being liked. I slowly allowed people to see me. Then, new people started showing me another world from the one I knew in Malaysia.

The world that I know especially in Malaysia and for twenty years beforehand was comfortable. It was a world where I didn’t need to worry about getting an education, work, car, money, a place to live, where to go, things to like or things to where. When I asked my love ones questions about these things, I was always told that I should be quiet and listen more. But here is the thing. Because I never put much thought into all these things, I never knew how to live with the person inside of me.

That world also made me believe that one should be pretty, know how to act right, dress right, look right, like money, big career, pretty clothes, cars, brands, houses and nice holidays. And I believed for a while that having all of that would get me lots of friends, or that people would look up to me. I also believed that in attaining these things, I will always be loved for who I am. So, I came to believe for a very long time that I did not need to question my life, and that I should accept what was in front of me.

But for more than twenty years I believed that I did not matter to the world and myself.

So I did the worst thing to my soul: I did not take care of it.

Instead, I took care of those who gave me some form of comfort, no matter how bad, abusive, or sad things turned out. I went into relationships that were bad or with people who also did not pay much attention to the relationship. I was as casual about the relationship and the partner as they were with me.

Always, the relationship ended. Always, it ended badly. Always, from the start, I forgot what mattered. And then, I would forget that I mattered in the relationship. If the relationship lasted, it would not be a close one. That being said, this applied and applies to everyone in my life.

I never knew how to handle or have good relationships.

But I now know that when you love someone else, the love becomes bigger than yourself. A love between a couple, and anyone that is in a relationship, is more than just ‘you’ and ‘I’. It is about us. Love does not die, but love can become evil and abusive, if left neglected. Fathers can rape their daughters. Wives can abuse their husbands. Brothers and sisters can kill each other. Friends can cheat each other.

To be in a relationship with someone else does not mean that everything is complete. Feeling the love is free and effortless. To keep having it is another thing. When you commit to love and allow it to connect you with another, you make a promise to work at making the love work. When you are true to each to other, no amount of time, effort or mountain is difficult enough.

Love doesn’t just move mountains. It moves you.

We are more capable of what we set ourselves up to be. We say that something is too hard but yet we see people fasting without food daily, and paralyzed people walking. The truth is that we get too distracted. When money, clothes, or a better life seems more delicious than the one that you already have, it is tempting to try it. Boyfriends, husbands, wives, girlfriends do this all the time with each other. Cheating is never just about one physical act. There are reasons why people come to cheat.

The grass is always greener on the other side.

Once you start seeing that that grass on your side is dull, well, what do you think will happen?

I do not promote for anyone to stay with their families, friends or spouses if the other is abusive towards them. I will not stay in a relationship where healthy boundaries are abused by my parents, siblings, wife, or friends.

I commit this to my soul because I love my soul. I have seen what I have enjoyed from the magic in my soul. I am living a beautiful life, and it grows healthier as I take more care of my soul and what matters to us.

I used to like football, Lamborghinis and getting high, especially at the best parties. I would walk around in football jerseys and go racing just to fit with my school mates. Then, recently, I met somebody who changed me in more ways than I imagined. She didn’t have to do anything. And she even didn’t have to be pretty or sexy all the time.

What she did is that she allowed me into her life. Without her realizing it, I have been getting closer and closer to her to appreciate the bad and ugly bits in both of us. But in doing so, I started understanding myself in a way that I never done before.

Here is one funny incident.

On one Sunday, I spent nearly the entire day cleaning and clearing up our apartment. I cleaned and cleared so much junk from our store room and bedroom. I also spent a really long time reorganizing my wife’s clothes, which she had chucked aside earlier to pack for her leave to Doha. Then as I was doing so, I realized that I was cleaning up junk, but in my own self. I had learned to identify the way she organized herself in the way that I do with myself, except our practice is different.

I have also been getting to know those who are close to her. As she has been away, it has not been easy for us to communicate often, and as such, I have not had many opportunities to get to know her. But here is one wonderful thing. The more I learn about my darling, the more she endears me. The more I understand about her life, her past, her present, her attitudes and her mannerisms, the more I accept her. As a result of learning about her, I feel so much closer to her than I ever have. I also feel so much closer to myself. And I want to know more about her.

Like most people, my beloved and I are two people who can forget about one another, especially when we are apart. In a world that is so cynical and filled with greed, our commitment will last so long as we both make it work. Love alone does not make a relationship work. Saying so and feeling so does not either. What I have learned with my wife is that what makes my commitment to her so is that I keep making it work. And I want to make it work all the time.

That goes for my relationship with my mates, my parents, siblings and in laws. They are not perfect people like me but with after everything said and gone, they are still around. That makes it worth for me to keep making our relationships work.

I used to want to be a high flying millionaire with houses all around the world, flashy cars, branded and beautiful clothes, a hot and sexy model with a beautiful looking wife and children. (laughs)

Now, I don’t want that.

Three years ago, I was 25 years old, working in Hong Kong, living on my own as an international consultant and earning more than 30 thousand dollars a month. I used to have more than thousand of dollars in my bank account every month. But it took me less than a month to realize one small thing:

Objects, money and fame will never make me happy. What I want is love.

Pretty things are nice to have from time to time though!

Today, what I have is different.

I live in a very modest apartment in Selangor (outside KL). I share this place with my wife, with whom we are raising a kitten. I make enough every month to scrape through the month, and at times, I struggle to even pay my bills. I drive a common car which helps me get from Point A to B, and I am a junior lawyer at a small firm. I do not fly overseas the way I used to, and think many times over before indulging in expensive things.

In the next or year, I hope that I will have enough savings to register myself and my darling before a wedding registry.

Today, I am happy.

My darling, who, at the very core of her, loves me as completely as she knows. Our little boy, the kitten is fiercely dominant, and well, likes to listen to his own head (just like me and his mother). He also tries to treat me like someone he can dominate but in the end, he makes me laugh too much, reminding me that he really is our child. My father, mother, sister and in-laws are not perfect people but they care for me. My mates will always be there for me, and we make sure that we get together for a good session often.

I have something good here.

It is love and what my soul needs.

I hope that this piece will help you in some form or way in your life. In any case, I always think that life is also about sharing. To this end, I will conclude here by writing that I am not a happy ending here, but, I am happily working at a progress.